Wanderung 17

No Rain in Spain, not even on the Plain!

April-May 2008

Tuesday May 6th, 2008

Noon position: On our Way home.


 

Bob:

Not wanting to compete with the Spanish crowds during the Madrid rush hour, we waited a while before setting out for the airport. That also gave us time to pack and try to stuff everything back into our suitcases in some semi-orderly fashion. In the end, it all did go in, but a bit higgly-piggly as we had a lot more dirty clothes, and a lot fewer clean clothes, than when we had started our trip over three weeks back. To cut down the necessary transfers among the subway lines, we had decided to walk about a kilometer to the Tribunal station where we could catch a line number 10 subway to the Nuevos Ministerios station and then transfer to a line 8 train straight out to Terminal 4 at Madrid airport.

It was a simple plan, but we hadn't quite tested each move with all our gear ("sack und pack", in German). I was pulling two wheelies and Monika her one big one, and we were both wearing our raincoats as there wasn't anyplace left to pack them. It turned out that the kilometer we had to walk was a gradual uphill, and the length was increased by our taking a wrong turn and then walking a couple of blocks to get back to the correct route. The usual bright Spanish sun was already beating down at 10 in the morning, so by the time we reached the Tribunal station I was sweating like a pig. Fortunately the air-conditioning on the subway train was working and that kept me from passing out, but then we had to lug our cases through the Nuevos Ministerios station and onto the track for the line 8 subway to the airport. I was of course sweating all the while and never thought about the fact that our passports were in a pouch in the center of my chest and taking the brunt of all this exercise.

Well, I finally got my coat off and rolled up on top of the suitcase while we traveled out to the airport, so I had cooled down and didn't think much about it until we had problems checking in for our flight. The self-service kiosk we had located on our exploration out to the airport the previous day was working like a charm until the very last step that called for us to slide our passports into a scanner thing that apparently was trying to read and verify the passport number. Well, it spit my passport back out saying something about a read error and then told us to go see a human ticket agent. Fortunately we were there early enough that we had plenty of time for that extra step, and we walked around the corner to find a human at the ticket counter .

We explained the problem to a nice, well-groomed, fastidious-looking young lady at the counter and she started typing away at her computer while she asked to see our passports. When I passed mine over to her, she grimaced, looked at me suspiciously, and exclaimed, "It's wet!" Thinking she would take me for a terrorist (since I always seem to have these problems with officialdom), I hastened to explain, "No, no, that's not water, that's sweat!!" Her grimace turned into an expression of profound disgust, and she daintily held my passport by a corner with the tip of her thumb and forefinger while she typed the number into her computer. I expect that from her dainty, feminine point of view being handed a sweat-soaked passport by a wild-haired foreigner was probably a rather disturbing and unpleasant surprise. But despite whatever misgivings she might have had, she checked in our luggage and printed out our boarding passes, although she did carefully hand the latter to Monika rather than to me.

Monika:

We woke up early, ate most of our food, (the last of the sangria and wine went down the drain, sigh!) cleaned up, and were out of the house a little before nine. As planned we started walking to the next station. Checking the map at one point we figured we had to go over one block and then walk a couple more blocks. We finally saw the Metro sign. We were so happy, that we forgot to check around for the most convenient entry point. We just started walking downstairs, carrying our luggage, till we ended up on the platform for the line we did not want. We walked to the other end, carried our stuff up one more set of stairs and then got to the newer section that had the escalators that took us down to the platform of line 10. When the train came, it was so crowded, that we could not fit in. But we knew, the trains came fairly often. Yesterday we never had to wait longer than 4 minutes. So we just started to walk along the platform. The train kept standing there with open doors. We finally saw a compartment were we could fit in. As soon as we were in the door, the doors closed and the train started moving. Obviously, the driver had patiently waited for us to get on the train. (That would never happen in either Washington or Germany!)

Switching to the airport train required waiting in another line. But when the train finally arrived at the station, everyone on the platform made it in. After a couple of stops we even got a place to sit. At terminal 4, we went to the self-check-in to get our boarding passes. Everything went swimmingly until the machine wanted to read our passports. Now Bob always carries our passports in a cotton pouch around his neck next to his body. The day was already warm, we had walked, carried suitcases, and stood amongst warm bodies. He had been perspiring and his passport was wet. The poor machine could not read his passport. So we went to the counter, where the woman said "this passport is wet" (no kidding). But she got her machine to read it, printed out our boarding passes, checked our luggage and sent it on its merry way.

Bob:

It turned out that our plane left from an auxiliary section of Terminal 4 that we reached by yet another little underground tramway. That added another 15 minutes or so but we still had plenty of time to relax, read and work on crostics while waiting for our plane to depart. British Airways fed us a nice sandwich on the leg to London and twice more on the way from London to Washington, so we certainly didn't lack for food. Even the transfer from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 at Heathrow went without a hitch and relatively quickly, and that was a first! (Fortunately we didn't have to deal with the new Terminal 5 and its teething problems.)

We had used the advanced check-in on the web to get exit row seats for the flight to D.C., so for once in my life I had enough legroom even though we were in economy class. Both legs of our flight were as smooth as silk, and even the taxi ride home was with a smooth, cautious driver, so I had absolutely nothing to complain about on our entire return journey. Nevertheless I was just a bit depressed and downhearted. I think it was just the fact that out trip was ending and Wanderung 17 had been a very nice, if short, journey. But when I thought about it a bit more I cheered up because I also knew that after a while back in the bosom of my family sooner or later I would once again get itchy feet and set out on some journey somewhere with Monika and a brace of cameras and a computer to record it all!

Monika:

Going through security was no problem, and we found out that Terminal 4S where we needed to go was actually another terminal, a 15 minute train ride away. We finally settled at our gate for some reading. I bought a German magazine and enjoyed reading it. The flight from Madrid to London went smoothly. They fed us two nice English (i.e. small) sandwiches and even wine was complimentary in economy class. I am starting to like BA.

We had left plenty of time in London to go from terminal 1 to terminal 4 since we've had experiences of long lines. There new terminal 5 was such a disaster on opening day, that they now are moving flights to it at a very slow rate. We were still going through the older terminal 4 as BA has told us in numerous EMAILs during the last few weeks. But again everything went smoothly. From landing at terminal 1 to being in the waiting area in terminal 4 took only about 30 minutes. So here we had two hours to spare. First I went around looking to see how I could spend the 25 pounds I still had from the last trip. I picked up two Donna Leon books, we had not read. Then I let Bob wander around with the money. He decided not to buy Cadbury chocolate, since neither of us is supposed to eat chocolate any more.

Finally the gate for our flight was announced and we wandered over, taking pictures of our airplane with the new terminal 5 in the background. Our seats were as good as I had hoped. Bob had plenty of room for his legs, no one put their backrest into our lap, and we could get up without bothering anyone. Food was, as requested, low fat, which would be either chicken or fish. This time it was fish, so Bob won. But the potatoes, carrot salad, and carrot cake desert were all good. Of course, there was wine with it and coffee to top it off. Not quite Air France cuisine but still quite satisfying. I watched the Fellowship of the Ring on my little TV, and the flight really was quite pleasant.

Our luggage arrived promptly and getting through immigration and customs went smoothly. A taxi took us quickly home. Our home was nicely lit. Bob's timers for our lights seemed to have worked just fine. We just dropped our luggage in the hall, called the kids to let them know we made it and fell into bed. Wanderung 17 had been immensely pleasurable and a lot of fun! We are ready to plan for our next trip.

Copyright 2008 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map of Trip Epilog

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